But Limeback, 20, is an uber speed cuber, one of the best in Canada, and soon, he hopes, an official Guinness World Record holder.

Head bent, eyes fixed, fingers flying, he solved the six-sided combination puzzle 5,800 times in a 24-hour period at a WLU event in October. He was attempting to beat a Hungarian man's record of solving 4,786 cubes.

The Guinness people must still confirm Limeback's win, and to do that Limeback needs to send them videos, photos and other documents as proof.

But Limeback has been a little busy. He's a third-year student in an honours bachelor of business administration degree program. He's a residence don with 20 male students on his floor, and he works part time as an online communities and marketing co-ordinator at Laurier.

After turning cubes at a dizzying speed for one full day, he rubbed his aching arms (he plunged them into a bucket of ice during the event), quaffed a beer with his supporters (Guinness, of course), and prepared to head into a ton of assignments, 10 co-op job interviews, mid-term exams and activities as president of the campus Rubik's Cube club.

He posted details of the 24-hour speed cubing event on Reddit, a social news and entertainment website, along with an "ask me anything" or AMA. The questions poured in and he made it to Reddit's front page, he says.

"To get to the front page of Reddit, I would estimate it got at least half a million views, just overnight."

Limeback is accustomed to people's curiosity about his super cuber abilities. He competed in Germany, Canada and the United States. Most recently, he placed 12th this summer at the world championships in Las Vegas.

He is ranked No. 1 in Canada for solving the cube while blindfolded in 38.42 seconds.

There's a Wikipedia page in his name. He gives Rubik's Cube tutorials on YouTube. One of his YouTube videos was part of a segment on Oprah Winfrey's TV show entitled World's Smartest and Most Talented Kids.

When he was a teen, he worked for a company that employed speed cubers to twist thousands of cubes into just the right patterns to recreate iconic paintings like The Last Supper. He does the work on his own now.

But recently, even Limeback was a little surprised when an employer asked him to demonstrate his Rubik's Cube skills during a co-op job interview.

"It was scheduled to be 20 minutes and it ended up going 35 and the entire interview was the employer asking me about things pertaining to the Rubik's Cube."

It was because of a previous interviewer's advice that Limeback now carries the cube with him to job interviews. It sets you apart from other candidates, he was told.

"It's a little risky at times because I don't want them to just see me as that. I want them to see what else I can offer for the position," Limeback says.

"But I do think when people see when you can solve Rubik's Cube in 10 seconds, they automatically assume that there is intelligence required and a lot of dedication to it."

And that's cool, Limeback says, as long as you don't label him a "nerd." He's not.

Dressed in a dark Laurier sweatshirt, neat grey pants and grey shoes, the young man with sandy-coloured hair, blue eyes and a winning smile looks like, well, a university student. Except that on this day, the bag that he's carrying with his knapsack isn't filled with books.

It's full of Rubik's Cubes and Lubix Cubes, speedy cubes made by the sponsor of his WLU event.

"My goal is really just to break the stereotype of what people think of when they think of the speed cuber," he says.

The stereotype of the nerd "who has nothing else to do" doesn't fit him, he says, nor the students on campus to whom he's teaching Rubik's Cube skills.

"I like to think that I don't exhibit those traits," he says, laughing. "I want to bring it to Laurier to show that it can be cool and fun and somewhat impressive."

Limeback was a 14-year-old student with high marks in advanced math, science and English at Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute in Toronto when he received his first Rubik's Cube from his aunt for Christmas.

He'd been impressed when he saw a fellow student solve the cube in two minutes. He'd seen his father solve it, but it had taken weeks, he recalls, smiling.

Limeback taught himself by studying instructions on the internet. It was a week before he felt comfortable with the algorithms he needed to know, he says. An algorithm is a set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps.

"When I'm interested in something, I stick to it until I master it," he says. He also taught himself how to play piano and guitar. He became good at playing piano, but very good at solving the cube.

"I think it's because it's a different challenge every time."

In a month, he shaved his time from seven minutes to under two minutes.

Five months later, he entered his first competition, the Canadian Open, in 2007. He was averaging 40 seconds. He decided to go up against the best.

"I ended up coming 24th in Canada, making the semifinals. I saw my name on the projector screen. It was second from last, but that was good enough for me.

"That was the real turning point for me."

In his next competition, he dropped his time to under 20 seconds.

"Within a year, I was almost up to speed with Harris Chan who, at the time, was the fastest Canadian."

When he saw a blindfold event, "that blew my mind. I thought it was completely beyond me." He watched a YouTube video to try it for himself.

Recently, he beat his own record in what's called the "multi-blind event" — the most Rubik's Cubes solved in an hour while he's blindfolded.

"They're all mixed up in a different way and within the hour, you have to memorize all of them, put the blindfold on and solve all of them consecutively," he says.

In 42 minutes, he memorized the colours on each side of 15 different cubes before putting on the blindfold. Then he solved them in 17 minutes, finishing the challenge in just under an hour.

That means he remembered about 300 specific algorithms, in order, and executed them in one go.

For some of us who have trouble memorizing our grocery lists, it seems an almost superhuman feat.

The same memory techniques, which he learned online, have helped him during exams and social occasions.

At a recent team event, he was introduced to 30 students.

"After a half-hour meeting, I realized when I left the room I was able to remember every single person's name and exactly where they were all sitting in the room."